When I was in high skool I worked for a Burger King part time and remember asking that question and getting a funny story in return.
I was told that the man who portrayed “The Burger King” got shitfaced and assaulted Ronald McDonald at Macy’s Turkey Day Parade and was subsiquently fired.
We all know what become of him. He now is an anti-beef hippie and so on. But I was wondering if anyone else had heard this story of clown assault?
It may seem unlikely, but then again it is just weird enough to be true. I never bought the whole vegan conversion bit from this guy. He always seemed a bit too smarmy about it, like the kind of guy who gets fired and then tells everyone he didn’t like the company and that he really quit. I could see while BK would let him live this ruse (if it is a ruse) becasue it would just be more publicity for him if they contradicted him anyhow.
You seem to be speaking of Geoffrey Giuliano, who worked as characters for both burger companies in Canada and the Northeastern United States. A quick search on Google brings up plenty of links about him, but they all attest to his being a vegetarian long before he got the jobs at either company. Nothing about him assaulting another Ronald McDonald™ while dressed as The Burger King™ at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (TM RM, all rights reserved) or anywhere else. Just finally not being able to deal with the conflict between his lifestyle and his job.
Although there are apparently hundreds of links (try entering “Ronald McDonald” vegetarian in Google), here is one brief biography.
Wasn’t he a short, dumpy cartoon guy in a fur-trimmed robe and a crown? I vaguely remember a character of that sort in commercials for Burger King. I think.
Anybody remember the motorcycle-riding group of monsters that used to be in Hardee’s ads? I remember Frankenstein best, but I believe there were others. That was back when they had a burger called the “Big Twin,” which was basically a Big Mac – right down to the Secret Sauce. Ah, memories.
Sadly enough, I remember all of these! (Except the flying-saucer thing!) And just in case that fact wasn’t meaningless enough, here’s a story to go with it!
My mother worked in PR for the McD’s regional office here many years ago. At one point, she was in charge of a large meeting on how to improve morale and sales. She asked me and a couple of my more artistic friends to come up with humorous posters depicting ways that McD’s was better than the competition.
We made goofy posters of Ronald McDonald booting a Mexican guy back “over the border”, parodying the Taco Bell “make a run for the border” ads. We made posters of Ronald sitting on the Burger King’s throne with the Burger King kissing his feet. We made something for Wendy’s–I’m sure it was good.
However, the funniest one was the one for Hardees. Hardees had just started to serve fried chicken and they wanted some posters to depict how the fact that they were concentrating on chicken rather than burgers was going to be their downfall. So we drew a band of renegade, redneck chickens (tattoos, beer bottles, bandanas, guns, etc.) torching a Hardees restaurant with the Nero-like employee stood out front and fiddled. The flames on the restaurant were done in yellow, red and orange glitter. The chickens were straight out of Colonel Sanders’ worst nightmare. It was hilarious! Of course, maybe you had to be there…
Nevermind.
Hey, if you can remember ads from the 60s, Ronald McDonald had this UFO-like flying hamburger he’d travel around in.**
I remember those! Waaaaaaay back in the '60s there was Ronald MacDonald and his flying hamburger.
There was also this character called “The Boss” who looked like Mr. Clean on steroids and has the personality of Bluto (of Popeye the Sailor fame). He hassled poor Ronald to get the job done (usually to clean the building where they worked).
Oh, the wonderful stuff that TV does to a child’s mind.
Oh, I remember “Herb”. The funny thing is, I was in high school and working part-time at a McDonald’s at that time…and one of the shift managers there was named Herb. We kept telling him he needed to pop into the nearest BK, wearing his McD uniform, and say, “Hey, I’m Herb–where’s my free Whopper?”
